Q. Our daughter is very keen on a young man from her office whom she has brought home to stay with us several times since Christmas. We can see his charm but one problem has come to light, which is that the trainers he wears leave the most awful and visible tread marks all over the carpets in our house. We don’t want to start a new rule of everyone having to take their shoes off once they come into the house because I know that is bad form. But how can we tactfully get him out of these chunky sports shoes which are making our carpets look like ploughed fields?
– Name and address withheld
A. Buy your husband a cheap pair of trainers with similar tractor tyre-style soles. Leave them in a prominent position. Before the boyfriend’s next visit, ask your daughter to ask him, when he comes to stay, to be sure to bring a spare pair of shoes besides his usual chunkies. Your husband now owns a pair himself and you have had to ban him from wearing his inside the house because of the tread marks. You feel you should make the ban universal.
Q. I have a close friend whom I adore and we talk all the time on WhatsApp, though he is living in South Africa. I read a lot and my problem is that he has begun asking me to recommend any good new books to him that I am reading. He then downloads the book on Kindle, but invariably comes back and says to me that he cannot believe I thought it was good. He thought it was one of the worst he had ever read, etc. This unnecessarily vituperative behaviour is slightly ruining my ‘relationships’ with these books, but as we are so close I can hardly not tell him what I am currently reading. I think in some weird way he may be ‘jealous’ of the books… In any case what is your advice?
– I.B., Edinburgh
A. Why not tell him you have had a switch to the classics and are re-reading, for example, all of Jane Austen? He will feel less jealous of ‘old material’ that everyone knows about than he will of new material that only you know about. If he does start downloading them on Kindle, you won’t need to ‘revise’ in order to discuss. Meanwhile, carry on with your usual habits.
Q. Can I pass a suggestion on to readers regarding the problem last week of not wanting to be caught glancing at your watch? Buy a Braille watch which you can discreetly feel in order to find the correct time.
– R.O., Kent
A. Thank you for this tip. A Braille watch needs no training to use. Models available range from slightly crude versions on Amazon at roughly £30 to elegant and chic from high-end jewellery shops.
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